CLARITY
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
PO Box 522 Bethel, VT 05032 (802) 234-6785
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Show your expertise; don’t just tell One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is not showing off its expertise. You may say to yourself, “I don’t make that mistake because I advertise.” That leads to another big mistake: assuming that telling is the same as showing. To successfully manage your image and reputation, you need to do both, and you need to do them in a variety of creative ways. Let’s say you’re in the real estate business — an appraiser or a realtor, for example — and the folks you work with are among the absolute best in their field. How do you go about leveraging their expertise so that potential customers come to you instead of to the competition? Ads are an option — you can tell folks about the awards you’ve won, the milestones you’ve achieved — but in the final analysis, that’s still just telling… sort of like an introduction to what makes your business so much better than the others. Along with that introduction, there needs to be followthrough in the form of demonstrating your expertise in ways that are meaningful to potential customers and clients. If you look around your community with the right kind of mindset, you should have no trouble identifying opportunities to demonstrate your expertise. Let’s take those real estate professionals, for example. An appraiser’s knowledge might be appreciated by folks trying to sell their homes in a slow housing market, so he or she could offer a free talk focusing on the kinds of factors that bring up a home’s value and those that reduce it. Realtors could do the same thing from their unique perspective. These talks, including a question-and-answer session with the audience, could be hosted by a local service organization that would open it up to anyone who registers to attend. Such organizations can include Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, Masons, churches, libraries, school boosters… the list is long and varied. Free talks or presentations are great ways to demonstrate your expertise, and can be applied to almost any business. From financial advisors to well-drillers and from lawyers to caterers, there is always knowledge you have that potential customers would be happy to know more about. This tool can make a huge difference in how your company or organization is perceived compared to competitors. Just in this one example, notice how many points of positive exposure there are to potential customers/clients: 1. To get people there, fliers could be posted around town, and notices could be prominently displayed on the civic organization’s website. Maybe there would even be a notice in the newsletter of the organization. All of these would include a couple of sentences about your representative’s expertise, as well as your company’s name. 2. Your company’s website and other publicity materials would announce the free event. Not only do you demonstrate expertise, but you also win points for sharing some of it at no cost. 3. Advertising it in local publications would be a good idea too, as long as you keep in mind that the word “FREE” should be prominent. 4. You should write a press release for the local papers about the upcoming event. In it, you want to have a quote from the expert about how excited he or she is to share years of experience with people, and they should be identified by name and title as your company’s representative: jamal.kheiry@clarity-stratcomms.com
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CLARITY STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
“…said Jane Doe, Senior Appraiser at Real Estate Solutions, Inc.” 5. Personally invite a reporter to attend when you send the press release, and pitch the idea by mentioning how much interest you’ve had from people registering. Reporters are interested in stories that appeal to the most readers, after all. 6. You’ll need to provide a take-away for the people who attend so they don’t feel like they have to take notes, AND to make sure they remember who provided this free talk. This could be as simple as a single page with summary points of the presentation and your company’s logo. Or, it could be more flashy: A branded folder with your company’s logo containing a one-page biography and photo of the presenter, summarized points of the talk, a copy of the presentation, additional resources, brochures/booklets, and a pen and note-pad with the company’s name on it. 7. Finally, a press release summarizing the event and its success should be sent to local papers (or to the reporter who attended), as well as thank-you notes to all involved. Although free talks are effective, they are by no means the only way to show what you can do. Other tactics include: • Positioning yourself as an “expert source”: There may be dozens of landscapers in the area who know about building beautiful rock walls and how to make lawns drought-resistant, but YOUR landscaping business should be the one that approaches the local newspaper’s features editor with a list of your key employees and their specific areas of expertise. Joe, for example, is certified in environmentally-friendly methods of weed control, while Janice has a bachelor’s degree in exterior design and has 12 years of experience in the field. And, you mention, they are more than happy to provide background and quotes for the paper’s upcoming Home & Garden special section. They probably even have story ideas that might not have occurred to the editor. • Donating your expertise to civic and/or charitable organizations: Your arch-rival in the catering business is doing well, and in fact she just took over an account that used to be yours. But maybe you can tilt the reputational field to your advantage by serving as an expert consultant to the school on its nutrition program. If you offer to serve as the go-to guy for moving the school toward using local produce and meat, you liaise with dozens of individuals in the area in the name of a good cause. Likewise, would the food-shelf benefit from your nutritional knowledge? How about the local meals-on-wheels program? Can you start a community-supported Thanksgiving dinner delivery program for people with mobility and/or financial challenges? • Start an internship or job-shadowing program: If you invite motivated young people to your place of business to learn about what you do, your business approach and knowledge is on display to the kids, and this gets passed along to parents and friends, too. The ripple effect in a community can be significant, and your reputation can benefit from providing professional development opportunities for young people. • Make your expertise front-and-center in all communications: Most people can’t afford to buy an item twice — or pay for a service again — because it was poor quality the first time. That’s why they look for someone who does things right the first time. For that, they seek someone who is an expert, so include your expertise in your organization’s basic marketing materials (brochure, fact sheet, press releases, website, ads, etc.) Demonstrating your expertise to potential and existing customers and clients is a powerful way to differentiate your business from your competitors. As long as you surround these demonstrations with the right kinds of communications (combining the showing with the telling), you can reap benefits of a significant competitive edge AND do the right thing in your community. Jamal Kheiry is a public relations consultant in Bethel. He can be reached at jamal.kheiry@clarity-stratcomms.com jamal.kheiry@clarity-stratcomms.com www.clarity-stratcomms.com